Our View: Economy recovery requires teachers of the trades

It all comes down to money, salaries for qualified instructors to teach the trades.

But when plenty of jobs are available for people skilled in the trades, the education system needs to adapt to the need and enlist community support to provide qualified instructors to provide a pipeline of locally qualified potential employees.

Joe Moser, lead welding instructor at Louisiana Delta Community College, has seen two of his instructors quit in the last year. With salary cuts and the lure of more money in the field, Moser said leaving the classroom behind is becoming a more attractive offer than staying to train the next generation of workers.

Since the merger of Delta and the Northeast Louisiana Technical School a year ago, eight teachers have left the school. At least four have been trade teachers, and Moser said he expects more to leave when a new opportunity arises.

Moser said the school isn't paying trade instructors a competitive salary. Many teachers took a 25 percent pay cut and saw their employment drop to nine-month contracts when the two schools merged.

Moser, for example, makes $35,000, which is the same amount he made welding offshore in 1967. He said at least one of his teachers that left made $40,000 in just 10 weeks of work in the field.

Delta Chancellor Barbara Hanson said Louisiana's challenge to attract and retain highly skilled trade professionals isn't unique to the state and that community colleges around the nation face the same problem. She said most people who enter the teaching profession do so for the public service, not the paycheck.

However, Louisiana's situation has been made more challenging by several rounds of cuts that have made a significant impact on higher education budgets. Delta's state appropriated funds have been reduced from $14.25 million in 2009 to $8.68 million in 2013, a drop of 39 percent.

Where the state was once paying 78 percent of Delta's budget, now it only pays 48 percent.

She said despite what she called a difficult transition period for high education, Delta is committed to providing a quality education for its students.

Mack McClung taught industrial electronics and instrumentation at the technical school for 32 years and retired just before the merger. He's worried the area will eventually lose its workforce because of the budget cuts and inability to pay top teachers a better salary so they'll stay.

"They want the cream of the crop to teach this stuff, but they'll only pay them $20 an hour," McClung said. "These people teaching, every one of them go somewhere else and make more money."

It may be time for community leaders - particularly those who have a vested interest in hiring qualified graduates who have the skills they need - to step up and assist Delta with recruiting and paying qualified instructors, just as Dow Chemical filled a need by investing in the community college's process technology program.

If our continued economic recovery includes being able to locally hire people skilled in the trades, we need to make sure the pipeline of potential employees exists.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Our View: Economy recovery requires teachers of the trades

It all comes down to money, salaries for qualified instructors to teach the trades.